“They’re gone.”
My chest hurts, knowing just how hard it is to lose a family member. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have no one left. I squeeze his hand and wait for him to continue.
“It’s been damn near two decades, and it still feels like I lost them yesterday.”
“I’m so sorry, honey.”
His shoulders come up as he silently shrugs. “Been a long time, babe.”
“Might be so, but you haven’t healed. You know you can talk to me, right?”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” he questions with a wink, one corner of his lush lips tipping up. There one second, gone the next, his face back to the stoic expression he had before. He takes a deep breath and holds it a beat before letting it out.
“You know what I mean.”
He gives me the slightest of smiles.
“Some things are best left alone, Liv.”
I pull my hand from his, not too gently, because he wasn’t ready to let me go and stand. His eyes track my movements the whole time. My feet take a few steps to stand in front of the chair he’s sitting in. His arms rest on the arms of the chair, head against the back, and his whole body’s held tight. He doesn’t even try to hide the pain in his eyes, not this time.
The driving need for me to ease his soul almost steals my breath.
I push my knee into the side of his seat, next to his thigh. His hands move to my hips just when my other leg joins in, and my butt hits his thighs. His breathing is harsh, but his touch tender. Reaching out, I dance my fingers across his cheeks until my palms rest against his bearded cheeks. I can feel the rapid beat of his heart from where my fingertips rest against his neck. The rest of him might as well be turning to stone.
“I know loss, honey. I know that life-changing feeling only comes when you’ve lost someone incredibly special. I look at you sometimes and see the same expression I had after losing my sister. Almost six months after I first met you all that time ago, I realized what I saw in your eyes. A pain so haunting that it consumes your soul. You continue to keep that inside, it will destroy you. I’ve watched it inside you for years. You don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”
He holds my gaze, not looking away as the pain slashes so bright and deep behind his.
“I had a great family,” he begins, his voice low and deep. I hold my breath, not wanting him to stop talking. Only when he continues do I let it slowly out. “I had a great family. That was after a shit childhood when I didn’t have that. I found my way to them. Had a great damn brother, too. Had him from the day I was born, and he protected me every one of those bad days when we were little. Even with a shitty mom, I had love because of him. It took me enlisting to find my real family, which damn sure wasn’t what the woman who gave birth to us.”
I move in the seat, my knees hitting the back of the chair, and try to pull myself closer to him. His hands at my hips flex before pulling me toward him the rest of the way. I stay silent though, letting him run the show. My hands move to his chest and I wait.
“I’ve seen a lot of dark shit in my fifty-two years, Liv. Seen a lot of stuff that would take a lesser man out at the knees and he would never get back up.”
He glances away and I feel the loss of his eyes.
“I never thought that I would have this though,” he whispers into the Boston skyline. “I never allowed myself to believe I had anything left to wake up for than whatever I had on my workload. I’m not the man I was before I lost them, Liv. The heartache of that doesn’t go away.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agree emphatically. “I’m sorry for what you lost. I wouldn’t wish losing family on anyone, but you didn’t die, honey. You don’t need to keep that hurt locked away anymore. You don’t need to keep them locked up, not with me. I’m here and I want to help you carry that so it doesn’t slash so deep into you.”
“You do.”
I smile sadly at him, my hands now resting on his chest don’t miss the rapid pounding I feel.
“One day, you’ll be able to remember them without pain,” I vow.
“Hasn’t happened yet, baby. Not sure it’s possible.”
“The first thing you have to do is let them out so their memory can bring you comfort and not pain. Think of all the good times you had, and you hold on to them with all you got in you. It won’t happen overnight, but it does eventually get easier to remember them without it feeling as if your very breath is trapped.”
“Ash, my brother,” he starts and just those three words sound like it was hard to get out. “He would have loved you for me.”
My smile draws his eyes and my heart picks up when I realize he won’t stop.
“I had an incredible family at the end, Liv. It kills me not to have them anymore.”
“They’re always with you.”
This time, his eyes come back up and he looks gutted. “No, no they aren’t.”
He moves us, standing with little effort despite the fact that I was in his lap. He helps me steady myself on my feet before he moves to stand at the window. Looking down at the city below us. I walk the few steps and to stand behind him and run my hands around his middle and press my face against his back. Silently giving him my support while he runs with his thoughts. He relaxes slightly when my head presses against his back but tenses up when my hands hit his abdomen. Not the first time he’s done that. I feel the reason against my palm. The little bundle of scar tissue that I notice every time we’re intimate.
“How did you get this scar?” I question, something I haven’t done before now.
He places his hand over where mine is resting above his scar. His silence follows my question. I wait, seeing if he will answer me. I don’t know what I was expecting. Well, that’s a lie, I was expecting him to ignore my question and change the subject.
“I was shot.”
With a gasp, I jump slightly, and he tightens his hold of my hand above his scar.
“It was the day that I lost everyone that I considered my family.”
Oh my, this man. My heart breaks for the pain that he carries with him, especially knowing this. No wonder he wears that pain like he does.
“Honey,” I breathe and he turns in my arms.
“It’s been a long time, Liv.”
“Yet you still have the pain of that riding you every day as if it was yesterday.”
“I always will, babe. It’s just the reality of it.”
“You’ve let it change your life though. You’ve let it keep you from living.”
His gruffly grunts. “They haven’t kept me from living. I do what I do for them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never had someone other than the guys ask me to explain something I’m not able to explain. You know I work with the government, but it’s all top secret stuff, Liv. I can’t tell you more than that. Everything I do for them is in the name of the family I lost.”
“I understand that’s what you think, but you’re not doing it for them if you’ve been stuck living half a life while you do your hush hush work. Do you think they would want you to have held yourself back from others all this time?”
“Might have been a good change of pace from the old me they knew.”